meditations on being

Spent 2 hours in the park today thinking. Had gone there to take iggy skateborarding - his new passion (how cool is that, im a proud skater dad!) - but he fell asleep in the pushchair on the way there. So I was left with 5 cans of beer and plenty of time to pinpoint what it is that makes a person an artist,. Its a recurrent theme, and one which frustrates me still. I also thought about ways in which to exploit my skills and current position to further my myth- for i have calculated that every artist needs to perpetuate his or her own myth, one that people can buy into and believe in, criticise, shoot down, commemorate, exhibit etc etc. Its a point Mathew Collings raised, using the examples of Warhol, Pollock and someone else... picasso i think. Bottom line is that you and/or your audience must perpetuate the myth. It has to have meat on the bones, be plausible or risible, but always present. That Israeli portraitist who I went to see (whose name escapes me) fully believes in her massively cultivated myth- from her dreadlocks to her nosering to her poorly executed middle eastern faces- it all forms part of the story, she doesnt ever doubt her work or its capacity to 'artify' the viewer- to make them believe what she believes - and that is that SHE is an ARTIST. Thats its poorly drawn or the colours are a\straight out the tube does not deter her belief. And she is a success. Where am I? Worrying about skin tone and underlying theories of my direction and sincerity, silently and anonymously indoors through a drunken fog.

So today I spent 2 hours drinking and evaluating what I need to do to be more like our Israeli friend. As I have said before, I only wish I was gay, or black, or penniless, or unhappy... its not easy being a white middle class comfortably off father with a beautiful wife, 2 beautiful kids and a mediocre income.

But todays meditations have left me with a bit of direction. I just need to keep creating. night, day, here on this blog, in the studio, at school- I just need to keep producing, keep drawing.

And the other, more important revelation. An ode to Jilly Booth, my printmaking tutor- PLAY. I need to play, to fuck about a bit- push things around, step and repeat, invert, re-arrange- just keep playing, keep on PLAYING. Jilly said it to me repeatedly during,my education, and I found it so difficult because I was intent on producing cool or beautiful images... but she was AND IS right- keep playing. That is my myth- I am the ICONOCLAST (secondary school art teacher Mr Ross, now expired, coined the phrase in my school report - Nicholas is a cheerful iconoclast- and I have never felt prouder than when I read this) and still to this day spend my time not taking things quite seriously- myself or others, a sort of defensive mechanism I am guessing. But it is probably the cosest I have come to shaping my myth - that is that I am a cheerful iconoclast, and that I need to keep on playing, keep on prodding, jibing and playing the fool. That is the artist. it is he whom I need to reconcile myself with. Starting today.